Top 5 Dangers to Your Business in 2008

1. The Quietest 90%

Who are the Quietest 90? They are the largest percentage of people who do not answer your surveys, the people that leave without complaining or complimenting, those that compliment but really weren't happy, and many others. Really the quietest 90 aren't the LOUDEST 10%! The Loudest 10% make all the noise and get all the response, but typically are not the people you service, the employees you want to keep or the friends that are truly your "bff."

2.It worked last year
Well If I'm not the first person to tell you, 2008 is not 2007. We have noticed the Stock market slow down, the housing market slow down, the price for gas go up again, the price for food rise. How do we stay on our toes, how do we not get caught on our heels? Well first of all don't get the "Chicken Little" syndrome that many columnist like to get around now. Keep your head low, target your customers, especially repeat customers. While you might not be aiming to get twenty new customers aim to get one to two new and LOYAL customers, because what has worked in the past years, will not work this year. Already with the advertisement of a tax incentive I would really be interested in finding out how many people will spend the entirety of it. They might be calling for a "recession" but keep your head low and your customers loyal.

3.Keeping Quality Employees
Keeping Quality Employees should ALWAYS be a top priority. In 2008 this is a very good idea with the worries of our economic slow down we will find our complacent employees "hanging in there" while out key and top employees will always have opportunity elsewhere. You goal with this should be in recognizing who these employees are and how to reward them, without blowing your budget. There are many ideas that we can discuss in a later BLOG. But start thinking about your employees this year!

4.Saving Money
Cutting costs is VERY important this year. According to the Consumer Price Index
in 2007 the "adjusted 12 months ending December 2007" Consumer Energy increased a whopping 17.4% while Food increased 4.9%. This is scary to look at. The primary things that we need to survive are food and energy. Those are reasons to save, now where do you cut the already tight budget. Look at your copy and supplies program typically they run together. Many employees tend to abuse these areas and purchase the "Best" pens on the market or print personal information on the copier or printer. Look at your ink usage and block certain copiers and printers to specific personnel. Your inkjet will cost more to operate than your black and white copier. Also take a look at what your companies policy is on birthdays, does someone buy a cake and then get reimbursed for it? I'm not telling you to be the grinch who stole birthdays, but put a different perspective on it. If it's your birthday you buy what you want, no reimbursements. If you don't want to celebrate like I've seenmany employees feel that way, you don't buy anything. Of course turning off lights in the right areas will also help, as well as installing energy efficient bulbs, which brings us to the last topic.

5.Spending Money in the Right Place
You will always need to spend money to make money! This year promise to spend it in the right places, energy conservation, employees and loyal customers. First buy the right bulbs for your lamps, upfront they'll cost you, but in the end it will pay off. Also if you own the building your business is in update your windows and insulate correctly, tune up your A/C and heating. With employees take care of them because they will take care of you. It only takes $5 to buy someone a pizza, or about $40 to pay for a tank of gas. If my employer did that for me you're darn right I'd tell my parents and my friends, but more specifically my parents because they have more time to talk to more people! $40 could get you a new loyal employee and more importantly a new customer. Customers like to know that the employees are taken care of, so getting the most loyal customer really does include getting the most loyal employee. With getting the most loyal customer I'm not telling you to give your product away, but look at what opportunities you can take to do the opposite of the large cable providers. It seems that they spend money to get new customers, I wonder if they realize that every two years I switch my provider to the cheapest provider!

Hope this helps you have a happy, healthy and Prosperous 2008

Goals

As you can tell with my two prior posts I haven't set any goals for myself with this "BLOG"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogs explains that "As of December 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 112 million blogs." That is an impressive amount of information.

Well here are a few of my goals:

• To make approximately 3-7 posts a week(while I feel my informations is important I don't know if anything I say will be ground breaking)
• To have a steady group of readers that choose to view The Quietest 90 once to three times per week.
• I don't ever expect to be the BLOG with the most "hits" but I would like to have 100 visitors per day.
• To motivate others, like I said earlier I don't think anything I say will be groundbreaking, but hopefully motivational in whatever sense it can be.

I hope many of you will set goals for yourself and continue to follow and try and achieve them. The worst factor for anyone trying to set a positive goal is another person in their life being negative.

Please leave your comments and I will try and be a positive force in your life and career. While I won't promote acts of stupidity, I will bring it up in an appropriate manner.

Set your goals, and go hard!

Time will tell who you really are

One of the things that I hated when I was 21 and just out of college was the lack of respect that I got from the rest of my team in the work place. I would bust my tail to prove myself and most of the time I did prove myself to be intelligent, polite, hard working and ethical among other things. What I could not prove was the time I spent was earning respect!

What I have learned from that situation is that not matter how intelligent, hard working, old or young you are you still have to prove yourself with TIME at the workplace.

In my position I work with and for people that are two to three times my age. They are extremely happy with the fact that I work hard and am intelligent but they also look how I react to different situations. In particularly there has been a change in my management style over the years in which I have learned from my elders.

Yes, I admit, I might not be the brightest and best suited for every job. I wouldn't have been able to say that when I came out of college.

I have friends who feel that just because their parents earn money they should earn money just the same. They jump from job to job spend 6 months here, a year there, and so on... I would never say anything to them, unless they asked me my opinion.

What most people that were born in the late 70's through the 80's don't understand is that life isn't as instantaneous as your IM or your BLOG for that matter. While I don't recommend working 80 hours a week, I do recommend working overtime on a regular basis, even if it is not for extra pay!

Why do I recommend this?! There are very few people that I would consider wealthy that don't work at least 50 hours a week. In the business world I look at promotions based on quality of work, effort put in, attitude and of course willingness to put in the extra amount when needed(there are other things I look for, but these are some of the most important).

This is considered a commitment, which all to many of us are afraid of! so don't jump ship from your job in 6 months because of one little thing, don't leave in a year, spend approximately 2-3 years learning and building the tools you need, then move on to a HIGHER paying job somewhere else.

TIME on the job will gain you much respect and much more money in your next position!

As Time Goes By

This Blog Spot is going to be a chance for me to share what I've learned in My career in Middle Management and Life. I hope to share with you techniques, ideas and whatever else comes to mind that day. Suggestions of books, public speakers, news articles and more.

The first thing that most people under estimate in any management position is keeping up with the "top dawgs". What I mean by that is staying current on your local, national and international events. How many people take the time to read the paper anymore. I know that most of my time I spend surfing the internet to find my news, which is perfectly fine if you look for things other than great photos.

The community I live in sends out a free paper on a weekly basis. I'll probably read less than a third of the articles and of course pick the ones with the best pictures! What I find so amazing is I can learn what the county is doing to change traffic patterns in my area, what areas of land they are able to continue to build on, who's running for the council, where the crime is and of course what movies are showing at the theater!

To cut my first Blabber short...My reasoning behind staying current on current events is that knowledge is power and those people who run the businesses in the area typically hold the power. These business owners are current on what is happening in their neighborhood, what roads are being built, where the housing is happening and even if they could lose their land to the government.

Keep educating yourself, stay powerful!

TQ90